Flying Man and Falling Man

Abstract

More than a decade after the September 11 attacks, Americans continue struggling to assimilate what happened on that day. This chapter considers how key icons, performances, and spectacles have intersected with narrative reconstructions to mediate collective memories of 9/11, within New York City, throughout the United States, and around the globe. In Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present, W. J. T. Mitchell starts from this sound historiographical premise: “Every history is really two histories. There is the history of what actually happened, and there is the history of the perception of what happened. The first kind of history focuses on the facts and figures; the second concentrates on the images and words that define the framework within which those facts and figures make sense” (xi). What follows is an examination of that second kind of history: the perceptual frameworks for making sense of 9/11, frameworks forged by New Yorkers at Ground Zero, Americans removed from the attacks, and cultural creators and commentators from abroad. The chapter juxtaposes two radically different emblematic figures associated with the World Trade Center: “Flying Man” and “Falling Man.” “Flying Man” refers to the performance art of Philippe Petit, the French high-wire walker who audaciously strung a wire between the Twin Towers and walked across it several times on August 7, 1974, as well as more recent references to this spectacle like Colum McCann’s novel Let the Great World Spin (2009).